Counting down to a 100 year milestone
As Centre Bush farmer John MacGillivray contemplates retirement, he has one last job he’s determined to do well and that’s celebrating the 100 years his family has been on the same piece of land.
“It could be a final fling but I don’t know. My grandfather was the first one here and I want to celebrate that with my family. It doesn’t happen very often,” MacGillivray says.
MacGillivray and his late wife Gail took over the family farm in 1980, having started out on a smaller farm nearby six years earlier.
“That was expected in those days. It was quite good but then we struck the 1980s and we had to tighten the belt and not expect too much and we worked quite hard,” he says, adding that he also played quite a bit of golf because if he stayed on the farm all the time he’d end up spending money on projects he couldn’t afford.
MacGillivray knows the history of the family farm well, from the first European settlers the Shand family who bought it from the Crown.
“Southland was settled up the rivers, the easier country, and the Shands grew oats for the horses that were used to work the land. Then a guy called Evans bought it off the Shands and he named the place Alwynne,” MacGillivray recalls.
That name didn’t fit well with MacGillivray though.
“I’ve looked it up and I can’t find a name or a home in Wales, I don’t know where it’s come from. He might have named it after his wife, I don’t know.”
As part of the centenary celebration, the farm has a new name, one MacGillivray reckons is more appropriate.
“I’m going to call it Strathnairn, that’s where the MacGillivrays come from, a little valley in Scotland, not far from Inverness. I’ve put it on my mailbox and I’ll put it up on a wooden sign for the celebration.”
A hundred years ago, his grandfather Duncan MacGillivray bought the property and he and his grandmother had five children. Two of their sons served in WW ll, including MacGillivray’s father who was a Lancaster bomber pilot. He met his future wife in England.
MacGillivray points to a metal suitcase now serving as a wood box.
“That’s my mother’s trunk that she brought her worldly possessions in. She was a war bride.”
His father came home ahead of her in 1945 after his father suffered a heart attack and she followed in a troopship with other war brides the following year.
“Dad went up and met her in Wellington and they trained down from Wellington to Invercargill and Dad’s cousin had a car and he met them at the railway station. My mother said she was frightened all the way coming home by the noise of the gravel underneath the car.”
MacGillivray left school at 15 and did some contracting work as well as working on the home farm and playing rugby.
“When I look back it was terrible wages but dad gave me a few sheep and I loved it.”
At 21, he left for his OE and spent two years as a driver for Contiki bus tours in Europe.
“It was still little Combi vans with tents on top and they were great times, all the stuff we’d learnt about history and geography were there.” There was undoubtedly some partying as well.
When he came home he met Gail and they settled down to farming, starting on their 70 ha block and then buying out his parents when they retired, creating a 180ha holding which has since grown to 300ha as neighbouring land has been acquired.
“You’ve got to keep expanding to survive and I’ve bought lots of bits and pieces over the years.”
MacGillivray’s enjoyed being a sheep farmer and reckons it comes naturally to him. Over the years he’s won various ewe lamb competitions, both locally and nationally and been a finalist in farm environment awards.
He has three blocks of native forest, mostly kahikatea, on the farm fenced off and protected by QEll convenants. Since stock have been excluded and some exotic trees removed the understory has regenerated.
The farm is big enough to support a fulltime worker and although he retains his interest MacGillivray isn’t pushing production as he used to and jokes that he’s now the CEO of a large lifestyle block.
His own children aren’t interested in going farming but he enjoys seeing the younger generation coming through at the farm discussion group he’s still a member of.
‘‘My mates’ sons have taken over the farms and it’s rather nice to go back and see what they’re doing. They listen to us now and again but to see the changes they’re making is interesting.
‘‘They’re mainly environmental changes although we were pretty good. We were always aware of what we were doing but it seems to be getting more so.’’
Recently MacGillivray obtained consent to convert his sheep farm into an 800-cow dairy farm, reasoning that would make the property more valuable to his family should they decide to sell it in future. He’s not planning to do the conversion himself but is paying to keep the consent valid.
‘‘Part of my family say, ‘Get out John, it’s not a good return on capital, retire and enjoy it’. But I am enjoying what I’m doing now even if I do have to make a decision shortly.’’
For now though he has a family celebration to plan.